How It's Used

Advertising's "...real violence, though, lies not in the ways in which these messages are forced upon us but in the notion they embody that words can be made to mean anything, which is hard to distinguish from the idea that words mean nothing.

"In that same vein it comes as no surprise to learn that the eponymous Clio is not some catchy acronym or some beloved industry figure but is none other than the ancient Greek muse of history and heroic poetry.  It's not hard to figure why the [Clio award] show's founders chose forty years ago to hitch their project to Greek mythology for the patina of class and erudition it provides-that's exactly the kind of colonization of value at which advertising excels-but if you wonder whether, by invoking this particular muse, advertisers were also expressing some longing for a sense of historical memory in this most self-effacing of the arts, you're approaching the problem from the wrong angle.  The salient fact about Clio in this context is that, of all the muses, she has the shortest name.  Just imagine trying to sell the public an awards show called the Terpsichores or the Polyhymnias.  The reinvented Clio-muse of appropriation, and of the alchemy by which depth is turned to account as surface-turns out to be the perfect muse for advertising after all."

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